Sunday, May 1, 2011

GDI - The Airforce that rocks

I'm almost done with the GDI rebalance and just finished updating the air units descriptions so I thought I'd mention how GDI's air power has changed.

First you get the normal Orca.  It still has it's anti-infantry vulcan and is equipped with TOW Rockets giving it an overall balanced useage.  Its also the cheapest of the 4 aircraft.  The disadvantage is its advantage, it's a jack of all trades master of none.

Then you have the Strike Orca.  This unit is a stripped down Orca with high speed boosters on it.  It's equipped with Structure Buster Missiles, these bad boys are designed to do triple damage vrs structures though they will do ok damage against vehicles in a pinch.  Their disadvantage is they are really only good in a bombing roll, as a defensive support unit they don't have much value.   Also their armor is pretty weak compaired to the other choices.

The final Orca design is the Gunship Orca.  This replaces our old Stormsmoke Orca unit.  The main reason for the change is that while the AI would use the Stormsmoke once in a while a player really couldn't tell what Orca they were dealing with by looking at it.  This Orca is much heavier than the other 2 making it slower.   However it's armor is stronger.  It is equipped with a forward light gattling cannon.  The main advantage to this thing is it doesn't need to fly back to reload meaning it's the only GDI air unit that can stay out in the field at all times.  The disadvantage is the cost is higher than the other 2 orcas and it's not as fast.  Also it's cannon, while it can hit ground and air, does have a chance to miss. 

Finally we have the Firehawk.  Not much has changed here, other than the payload.  Now your 2 choices are Flexable or MOAB.  Yes, the MOAB is back folks, and it's better than ever!  Flexable loadout is equipped with Anti-Air Missiles and the Firehawks Carpet bomb loadout, the Firehawk will use what it has to to get the job done.  If you switch to the MOAB you lose the ability to defend against air, but you get the MOAB!  Awsome right?

One last thing to talk about.  With the new "hit/miss" system added in to cannon type weapons I have found a few things out.  Units that now have a chance to miss have a harder time hitting mobile targets.  This gives lighter/faster units an actual feel of being able to pull off "Hit and Run" attacks.  But not always, they still do hit, it's just harder like it should be.  Also I've noticed that smaller units are harder to hit than larger ones (duh?).  I watched 4 Gunship orcas go to town trying to blow some pitbulls up and having a bit of a time with it as the pitbulls were moving/escaping.  However I watched the same 4 pitbulls go to town and have no trouble hitting a Titan Tank.  Its simply easier to hit larger targets.  I like that.

I'll be posting pics of the MOAB in action on Mod DB soon, so keep on watching.  After this is done I'm off to work on the Scrin, then NOD.  Scrin shouldn't take too long as I'm only changing a few things/powers.  NOD is a different beast all together as we're not sure what we're going to do really when it comes to a few things.  Till then.

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